in a lot of years watching Marsh Harriers I have never seen one try to take a fast moving wader from a high flying flock -- this afternoon this bird came in at about 70m and clearly headed straight into a flying flock of Golden plovers numbering about 3000 birds -- it jinked around and lashed out a foot a few times but he Goldies were easily capable of evading it though the thought was clearly there
the first male from yesterday showing the distinctive upper secs -- the middle image could have been good but! it suddenly came over the top of the hide and dived at a Snipe only 2m away but it was so fast and I was so slow that it got away and was quickly 100m away before I got it in focus!
this was the closest I have ever been to seeing a real bird flock collision -- the Goldies bolted from one direction but as they went up a flock of Lapwing came into the flock from the other direction while a gang of Black-tauiled Godwits also got involved in the mess and there seemed to be a few collisions but they soon sorted themselves out with no road closures
but how many? first 3 shots morning remainder late afternoon appears to be two different males here the first with two retained juvenile inner secondaries, barred on the underside-- again all Canon 1D4 with 500 f4II and 2xIII hand held -- sometimes the AF amazes me 4th image down but most of the time it baffles me!
